Some Iraqi Sunnis in Mosul and other cities may have welcomed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) as liberators in response to the authoritarian and overtly sectarian policies of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as Harith al-Qarawee and others have reported for Al-Monitor.

Omar al-Jaffal writes this week from Iraq that at least 14 groups, among them factions of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, have joined with ISIS forces in their military campaign in Iraq. 

Edward Dark (pseudonym) writes that this tentative embrace of ISIS has a tragic and familiar ring to many in his home city of Aleppo. Dark predicts Iraqi Sunnis who may have initially welcomed ISIS as liberators will regret their liberation by terrorists:

“It seems Iraq’s Sunnis supporting ISIS today are destined to share the same fate as Syria’s rebel-supporting Sunnis, as they struggle against a regime they view as sectarian and oppressive. Their willingness to join forces with the devil to defeat their opponents will soon turn the ecstasy of newfound liberation into the slow horrible realization that they’ve been used and preyed upon by an opportunistic terrorist group hell-bent on resurrecting a medieval theocratic fiefdom ruled by brute force and inhumane repression, complete with beheadings, stonings and crucifixions. What is certain is that as ISIS’s fortunes rise in Iraq, they rise as well in Syria. As far as ISIS is concerned, they are fighting in one large, borderless, Islamic state.”